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rolled, I rambled on about “town pride” and “camaraderie” and “communities coming together.” I sprinkled in a few uplifting catchphrases as well, working in “but there will be brighter days ahead” more times than I’m comfortable admitting.
    In retrospect, my intentions seem obvious. I was a cheerleader for the living—proof that some of us were still okay. Yet I could fulfill this role only when I refrained from looking at the destruction behind me. Eyes forward, chin up, I stared into the camera and assured the nation that Joplin, like Tuscaloosa, would undoubtedly endure.
    Diane Sawyer’s
World News
never aired the footage. Once again, I had been spared. I had nothing of value to add, and as I turned on the news the following evening, I was relieved to watch B-roll from other people’s stories, instead. I received my message loud and clear: People had heard enough from B. J. Hollars.
    If the interview had gone longer, I might’ve described to Diane Sawyer’s crew how my wife and I rode out the storm in a bathtub, our only inconvenience a dripping showerhead. I might also haveadmitted that we watched a romantic comedy that night, burning the battery from her laptop, while just out of earshot, people cried for help.
    â€œ
Maybe
your town will recover,” I should have explained to the camera. “I guess I really don’t know.”
    Marc Halevi was likely equally uncertain of the outcome from his photos of the woman in the surf. Could hardly have predicted the debate he’d spur from what developed on the beach and in the darkroom. Perhaps writers and photojournalists are alike in that we can only seem to find answers in the aftermath. Yet as reporters of truth, perhaps our first responsibility is simply to tell it, to scribble and to click. When we start down the path of parsing what
portion
of truth we feel obligated to tell—abridged or unabridged—perhaps we do a disservice to our readers and viewers. Simply put, reporters of truth (be it through words or pictures) are bound to a different set of rules than fiction writers and illustrators. We work at a disadvantage because we don’t create the stories, nor are we capable of divining their endings. In nonfiction, “happily ever after” is always a possibility but never a guarantee, though this in no way diminishes our need to recount these stories regardless. “The truth is in the telling” (or so the adage goes) and as a writer, it is my job simply to tell it.
    At least that’s what I thought in the moments before all my self-righteous rules went out the window.
    You see, less than forty-eight hours after I completed a draft of this essay, a young man drowned in the river behind my house. As I began my first early morning jog in my new town I noticed a bevy of police officers and rescue personnel peering into the river. To my right, a boy in a still-wet swimsuit leaned over a car’sdriver’s-side window to share news with the girl inside. I overheard what I could while jogging past, though in truth, I didn’t hear much.
    The story revealed itself later: How the young man and an acquaintance attempted to swim from the nearby island back to shore. How the pair became separated in the dark water. How one made it back but one didn’t.
    No telephoto lens captured anything.
    No lifeguards were called in to assist.
    The next morning, my wife, dog, and I walked the riverbank directly across from that island. We were not looking for a body, but we found one—a middle-aged man tromping his way through the brush. I asked him if there had been any updates on the search, to which the man replied that no, they had yet to find his nephew.
    â€œNephew?” I asked.
    For the next ten minutes we spoke with the victim’s uncle, and he told us many things that I will not repeat here.
    Perhaps a better writer would repeat them, would take my earlier advice